After Jerry Trotter made his proposal to Edmund three weeks previously, it had taken Edmund two days to call the number Trotter gave him. Ten, fifteen times he had told himself that he wouldn’t call, that he’d throw the piece of paper in the fireplace and forget all about it. Other times, he convinced himself that this was a test of his resolve set by Jerry, that if he called the number, Jerry himself would answer the phone. But at times, usually in the dead of night, when he sat by himself in his study drinking whiskey, Edmund ran through what such a call would be like to make. Say this guy actually was a killer for hire; how do you introduce yourself to someone like that? What do you say? He figured that if you called on business like this, you didn’t use your own phone.

Edmund finally called the number from a pay phone in a Laundromat on Second Avenue in the Sixties in Manhattan, a busy spot without any obvious security cameras trained on it. Edmund steeled himself, inserted his money, and dialed the number. Someone picked up but didn’t speak, and Edmund ran through his rehearsed lines.

“Hello. I got your number from a friend. I have a proposition for you. This isn’t a joke.”

Edmund didn’t say any more; the phone line quickly went dead.

An hour later, Edmund called again, from the same pay phone.

“Can we meet somewhere? I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say—”

Click.

The next day, on the fourth attempt, at ten in the morning, a thickly accented voice said, “Call in an hour. Pay phone bank at Grand Central. Main-level concourse.”

Edmund did as he was told.

“Take six train to Morrison Avenue, exit platform north side and wait.”

Edmund was at a point of no return. All he’d done was make a few phone calls, but now he was going to meet someone he knew was a killer. He looked at the commuters walking through Grand Central, ordinary people like him. If he went ahead with this, he would no longer be ordinary. In the recent endless days and sleepless nights, Edmund had weighed the possible costs of doing what Jerry demanded and doing nothing. If he failed to act, he’d be ruined financially and personally. But Jerry’s terrible scheme gave him a chance.

Another thought had occurred to Edmund and was proving impossible to ignore. These doctors were destroying his business. It was their fault he was in this position, and he was damned if he was going to let them get away with it.